Helen Molesworth

Last updated

Helen Anne Molesworth (born 1966, Chickasaw, Alabama) is an American curator of contemporary art based in Los Angeles. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Raised in Flushing, Queens, and Forest Hills, Queens, by a textile artist mother, who worked in the menswear industry, and an English professor father, who taught at Queens College, Molesworth graduated from Stuyvesant High School. [2]

After graduating from the State University of New York at Albany, Molesworth entered the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. [3] In 1997, she earned a Ph.D. in Art History from Cornell University. [4] [5]

Career

Early career

As head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard University Art Museums, she presented an exhibition of photographs by Moyra Davey and ACT UP NY: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis 1987–1993. While Curator of Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art from 2000 to 2002, she arranged Work Ethic, which traced the problem of artistic labor in post-1960s art. From 2002 to 2007 she was the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts where she organized the first U.S. retrospectives of Louise Lawler and Luc Tuymans, as well as Part Object Part Sculpture, which examined the influence of Marcel Duchamp's erotic objects.

ICA Boston, 2010–2014

From 2010 to 2014 Molesworth was the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston, where she assembled one person exhibitions of artists Steve Locke, Catherine Opie, Josiah McElheny, and Amy Sillman, and the group exhibitions Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, [6] Dance/Draw, [7] and This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. [8]

MOCA LA, 2014–2018

Molesworth was the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, 2014–2018. [9] After her arrival in Los Angeles in 2014 she reinstalled MOCA's permanent collection galleries, co-organized a survey exhibition of Kerry James Marshall that traveled to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, organized Anna Maria Maiolino’s first US retrospective, and forged a partnership between MOCA and The Underground Museum. [10] Her final exhibition at MOCA was a 2018 exhibition One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art, which traced the legacy of Farber's "termite art" ideology on a wide range of contemporary artists, including many from Molesworth's own curatorial history. [11]

In March 2018, Molesworth was abruptly fired from MOCA, due to what the museum called "creative differences." [12] Catherine Opie, a MOCA board member, reported that museum director Philippe Vergne had said he fired Molesworth for "undermining the museum." [13] Molesworth has long spoken publicly about the lack of diversity and equity in art institutions and the difficulties she has encountered in mounting exhibitions by non-male artists and artists of color—in a lecture to the UCLA Design Media Arts department on January 18, 2018, she said: “I don’t think there’s any way for MOCA to not be a white space. Not gonna happen. The DNA is too deep. We don’t have anyone of color on our board. Let’s start right there.” [14] In a 2019 Cultured Magazine article by Sarah Thornton, Moleswoth said of the incident: “It was a total debacle." [15]

Recent career

Since 2019, Molesworth has been the Curator in Residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. [16]

Molesworth has organized shows about the artists Noah Davis in 2020 and Ruth Asawa in 2021 at David Zwirner Gallery. [17] Also in 2021, she curated the exhibition "Feedback" at the Jack Shainman Gallery's The School space in Kinderhook, housed in a former high school. The 21-artist show examined the history taught in American schools through the issues left insufficiently addressed in educational curricula, most notably race, and continues Molesworth's critique of institutional spaces and power structures. [18]

In 2022, Molesworth was awarded the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing alongside Hilton Als by the Clark Art Institute. [19] There were two winners that year, the most in a single year since the prize's founding, due to the societal shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2023, Molesworth curated "Face to Face: Portraits of Artists by Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe, and Catherine Opie" at the International Center of Photography, which focused on intimate portrait photography of various cultural figures by the three artists. [20] Later that same year, a collection of her essays, Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing about Art, curated from various exhibition catalogues and publications such as Artforum, was published by Phaidon Press. [21]

Other activities

Molesworth is the author of numerous catalogue essays and her writing has appeared in publications such as Artforum , Art Journal, Documents, and October . The recipient of the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies’s 2011 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, she is currently at work on a book about "what art does."

Molesworth was a jury member for the College Art Association’s Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement (2012), [22] The New School’s Vera List Prize for Art and Politics (2014), [23] the Prix Canson (2016), [24] the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize (2018), [25] and the PinchukArtCentre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2018). [26] In 2016, she was a member of the jury which selected Njideka Akunyili Crosby as recipient of the Prix Canson. [27]

Molesworth was the commencement speaker for the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in June 2018. [28] In 2022, she hosted the six-part podcast, Death of an Artist, about the death of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta, wife of Carl Andre; [29] the series made several “best of 2022” lists, including those of The Economist and The Atlantic . [30] She has since interviewed artists and thinkers for David Zwirner Gallery's “Dialogues” podcast. She also leads art conversations as the host of the gallery's video series “Program”. [31]

Personal life

On August 13, 2006 Molesworth married her wife, art historian, Susan Dackerman in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [32]

Selected exhibitions

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles</span> Art museum in California , U.S.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's original space, initially intended as a temporary exhibit space while the main facility was built, is now known as the Geffen Contemporary and located in the Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles. Between 2000 and 2019, it operated a satellite facility at the Pacific Design Center facility in West Hollywood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wexner Center for the Arts</span> Contemporary art, Ohio State University

The Wexner Center for the Arts is the Ohio State University's "multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luc Tuymans</span> Belgian painter

Luc Tuymans is a Belgian visual artist best known for his paintings which explore people's relationship with history and confront their ability to ignore it. World War II is a recurring theme in his work. He is a key figure of the generation of European figurative painters who gained renown at a time when many believed the medium had lost its relevance due to the new digital age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Opie</span> American fine-art photographer (born 1961)

Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles</span> Contemporary art museum

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States. As an independent and non-collecting art museum, it exhibits the work of local, national, and international contemporary artists. Until May 2015, the museum was based at the Bergamot Station Arts Center in Santa Monica, California. In May 2016, the museum announced an official name change to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and its relocation to Los Angeles's Downtown Arts District. The museum reopened to the public in September 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klaus Biesenbach</span> German art historian and museum director (born 1966)

Klaus Biesenbach is a German-American curator and museum director. He is the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, with Berggruen Museum and Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection, as well as the berlin modern under construction.

Claudia Gould is an art curator and former Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director of The Jewish Museum in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce J. Scott</span> African-American artist

Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.

Philippe Vergne is a French curator who has been serving as director of the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum since 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth A. T. Smith</span> American art historian, museum curator (born 1958)

Elizabeth A. T. Smith is an American art historian, museum curator, writer, and presently the executive director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. She has formerly held positions as a curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), the chief curator and deputy director of programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the executive director, curatorial affairs, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is the author of numerous books on art and architecture, including Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses; Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective, Helen Frankenthaler: Composing with Color, 1962–63, and many others.

Cindy Bernard is a Los-Angeles based artist whose artistic practice comprises photography, video, performance, and activism. In 2002, Cindy Bernard founded the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound, which presents site-relational experimental music. Her numerous Hitchcock references have been discussed in Dan Auiler's Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic (1998), essays by Douglas Cunningham and Christine Spengler in The San Francisco of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo: Place, Pilgrimage and Commemoration (2012) and Spengler's Hitchcock and Contemporary Art (2014).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Njideka Akunyili Crosby</span> Nigerian-born American visual artist

Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles, California. Through her art, Akunyili Crosby "negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating collage and photo transfer-based paintings that expose the challenges of occupying these two worlds". In 2017, Akunyili Crosby was awarded the prestigious Genius Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Jenelle Porter is an American art curator and author of numerous exhibition catalogs and essays about contemporary art and craft. She has curated important exhibitions that have helped studio craft to gain acceptance as fine arts. These include the exhibitions Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in 2009 and Fiber: Sculpture 1960–Present at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 2014.

Katie Pratt is an artist and abstract painter living and working in London. Born in Epsom, UK, 23 May 1969, she is most recognised for large paintings with heavy volumes of oil paint that combine geometric and organic detail in diagrammatic complex systems. She won the Jerwood Painting Prize in 2001.

Alma Ruiz is a curator, best known as a longtime, former senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).

Jane Hart is an American curator, gallerist, and artist in New York City. She has worked as an art curator since 1993, having been a gallery owner at in Los Angeles and Miami, and a contemporary art professional in Manhattan and London. As an artist, she has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions in South Florida and Cleveland, Ohio. Her specialty is contemporary collage, with works in private collections in the United States and abroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tomashi Jackson</span> American artist

Tomashi Jackson is an American multimedia artist working across painting, video, textiles and sculpture. Jackson was born in Houston, Texas, raised in Los Angeles, and currently lives and works in New York, NY and Cambridge, MA. Jackson was named a 2019 Whitney Biennial participating artist. Jackson also serves on the faculty for sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is included in the collection of MOCA Los Angeles. In 2004, a 20-foot-high by 80-foot-long mural by Jackson entitled Evolution of a Community was unveiled in the Los Angeles neighborhood of West Adams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noah Davis (painter)</span> American artist (1983–2015)

Noah Davis, was an American painter, installation artist, and founder of the Underground Museum in Los Angeles. When talking about his work, Davis has said, "if I’m making any statement, it’s to just show black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it," and describes his work as "instances where black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide." Davis died at his home in Ojai, California, on August 29, 2015, of a rare form of soft tissue cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johanna Burton</span> American art historian, critic, and curator (born 1971/1972)

Johanna Beth Burton is an American art historian, critic, and curator who has been the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles since 2021. She was director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University from 2018 to 2021.

References

  1. Cascone, Sarah (2014-05-30). "Helen Molesworth Hired as Chief Curator of LA MOCA". Artnet News. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  2. Robin Pogrebin (25 January 2023), A Curator Unbound: First She Was Fired. Then She Found Freedom New York Times .
  3. Robin Pogrebin (25 January 2023), A Curator Unbound: First She Was Fired. Then She Found Freedom New York Times .
  4. "Helen Molesworth Appointed Curator of Contemporary Art".
  5. Helen Anne Molesworth and Susan Dackerman New York Times , 13 August 2006.
  6. "Richard Deming on "Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957"". www.artforum.com. March 2016. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  7. ""Dance/Draw" at ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston". www.artforum.com. 13 December 2011. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  8. Molesworth, Helen; Burton, Johanna; Grace, Claire, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, Ill.), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, Mass.), Walker Art Center (2012). This will have been: art, love & politics in the 1980s. Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. ISBN   978-0-300-18110-4. OCLC   759174324.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. Cascone, Sarah (2014-05-30). "Helen Molesworth Hired as Chief Curator of LA MOCA". Artnet News. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  10. "An unassuming storefront. A major museum. A collaboration that takes museum art to the people of L.A." Los Angeles Times. 2015-07-20. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  11. Almino, Elisa Wouk (2018-11-14). "Helen Molesworth's Last MOCA Exhibition Is an Act of Love". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  12. "MOCA fires its chief curator". Los Angeles Times. 2018-03-13. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  13. "MOCA fires its chief curator". Los Angeles Times. 2018-03-13. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  14. Douglas, Sarah (2018-03-21). "Prior to Her Firing, Curator Helen Molesworth Made Public Statements Critical of Museum Practices, MOCA". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  15. "Curator Helen Molesworth Returns to the Stage With Something to Say". Cultured Magazine. 2019-02-12. Retrieved 2019-03-17.
  16. "ANDERSON RANCH ARTS CENTER NAMES HELEN MOLESWORTH AS NEW CURATOR-IN-RESIDENCE". Anderson Ranch Arts Center. 2019-02-26.
  17. Robin Pogrebin (25 January 2023), A Curator Unbound: First She Was Fired. Then She Found Freedom New York Times .
  18. Heinrich, Will (2021-08-12). "Teaching a New Inclusiveness at The School". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-09-30.
  19. "Clark Institute Names Helen Molesworth and Hilton Als as Recipients of 2022 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing". The Clark. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
  20. "Face to Face: Portraits of Artists by Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe, and Catherine Opie". 31 October 2022. Retrieved 2024-04-02.
  21. "Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing about Art" . Retrieved 2024-03-28.
  22. Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement College Art Association.
  23. Syrian cinema collective Abounaddara awarded 2014 Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politic The New School, press release of 28 October 2014.
  24. Prix Canson 2016, June 22–July 1, 2016 Drawing Center.
  25. Robin Pogrebin (2 May 2018), Collectors Join Forces to Create $800,000 Art Prize New York Times .
  26. PinchukArtCentre announces the jury for the 5th edition of the Future Generation Art Prize Archived 2023-01-29 at the Wayback Machine Future Generation Art Prize, press release of 29 May 2018.
  27. Andrew Russeth (22 June 2016), Njideka Akunyili Crosby Wins 2016 Prix Canson  ARTnews .
  28. "UCLA Arts: School of the Arts and Architecture". UCLA Arts: School of the Arts and Architecture. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  29. "The Tragic Story of Ana Mendieta is Uncovered in Death of an Artist". Vanity Fair . 29 August 2022.
  30. Robin Pogrebin (25 January 2023), A Curator Unbound: First She Was Fired. Then She Found Freedom New York Times .
  31. Robin Pogrebin (25 January 2023), A Curator Unbound: First She Was Fired. Then She Found Freedom New York Times .
  32. "Helen Anne Molesworth and Susan Dackerman". The New York Times. 2006-08-13. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-02-21.
  33. Steadman, Ryan (February 2, 2016). "One of the Great American Artists Gets an American Retrospective" . Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  34. Miranda, Carolina A (January 8, 2016). "9 ways in which Helen Molesworth's permanent collection show at MOCA is upending the story of art". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 9, 2016. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  35. Westin, Monica (February 16, 2012). "The MCA's "This Will Have Been" and the Subjectivity of History". Art21. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  36. "SFMOMA AND WEXNER CENTER TO PRESENT FIRST U.S. RETROSPECTIVE OF THE WORK OF LUC TUYMANS". SF MoMA. Retrieved 10 April 2016.
  37. MOLESWORTH, HELEN (2018). ONE DAY AT A TIME: manny farber and termite art. S.l.: PRESTEL ART. ISBN   978-3791357669. OCLC   1020312076.
  38. Molesworth, Helen; Banz, Stefan; Edition KMD (2017). Helen Molesworth Duchamp: By hand, even. Verlag für Moderne Kunst. ISBN   9783903153981. OCLC   1008599377.
  39. Molesworth, Helen Anne; Erickson, Ruth (2016). Leap before you look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957. Boston; Boston, Mass.; New Haven, Conn.; London: Institute of contemporary art in association with Yale University press(IS) Institute of contemporary art; Yale University press. ISBN   9780300211917. OCLC   982274467.
  40. Butler, Cornelia H; Schwartz, Alexandra (2010). Modern women: women artists at the Museum of Modern Art . New York: Museum of Modern Art : Distributed in the U.S. and Canada by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. ISBN   9780870707711.
  41. Molesworth, Helen (2013). Amy Sillman: one lump or two. New York: DelMonico Books (Prestel). OCLC   950233366.
  42. Molesworth, Helen (2013). Louise Lawler. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN   9780262018814. OCLC   858000815.
  43. Molesworth, Helen; Gioni, Massimiliano; Moore, Jenny; Rist, Pipilotti; New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, N.Y.) (2012). Klara Lidén bodies of society. New York, N.Y: New Museum. ISBN   9780985448523. OCLC   901443271.
  44. Molesworth, Helen Anne; Ward, Frazer; Mercer, Kobena; Burton, Johanna; Lebovici, Elisabeth; Horrigan, Bill; Schulman, Sarah (2012). This will have been: art, love, & politics in the 1980s . Chicago; London; New Haven (Conn.): Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Yale University Press. ISBN   9780300181104.
  45. Opie, Catherine (2011). Empty and full. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verl. ISBN   9783775730150. OCLC   741701119.
  46. Molesworth, Helen (2011). Dance/Draw: the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz. ISBN   9783775731638. OCLC   972017383.
  47. Molesworth, Helen; Grynsztein, Madeleine; Palais des beaux-arts (Bruxelles) (2011). Luc Tuymans [exposition, Palais des beaux-arts de Bruxelles, 18 février-8 mai 2011 (in French). Bruxelles: Ludion. ISBN   9789055447725. OCLC   758373350.
  48. Molesworth, Helen; Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH) (2005). Part object, part sculpture. Columbus, OH; University Park, PA: Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University; Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN   0271028556. OCLC   907144433.
  49. Molesworth, Helen; Baltimore Museum of Art (2001). Bodyspace. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art. OCLC   272520549.
  50. Molesworth, Helen; Alexander, M. Darsie; Bryan-Wilson, Julia; Baltimore Museum of Art (2003). Work ethic. Baltimore [etc: Baltimore Museum of Art [etc. ISBN   0271023341. OCLC   932548046.